Thalia   

and caused them wholly to disappear. Thus, according to the Ammonians,
did it fare with this army.
About the time when Cambyses arrived at Memphis, Apis appeared
to the Egyptians. Now Apis is the god whom the Greeks call Epaphus. As
soon as he appeared, straightway all the Egyptians arrayed
themselves in their gayest garments, and fell to feasting and jollity:
which when Cambyses saw, making sure that these rejoicings were on
account of his own ill success, he called before him the officers
who had charge of Memphis, and demanded of them- "Why, when he was
in Memphis before, the Egyptians had done nothing of this kind, but
waited until now, when he had returned with the loss of so many of his
troops?" The officers made answer, "That one of their gods had
appeared to them, a god who at long intervals of time had been
accustomed to show himself in Egypt- and that always on his appearance
the whole of Egypt feasted and kept jubilee." When Cambyses heard
this, he told them that they lied, and as liars he condemned them
all to suffer death.
When they were dead, he called the priests to his presence, and
questioning them received the same answer; whereupon he observed,
"That he would soon know whether a tame god had really come to dwell
in Egypt"- and straightway, without another word, he bade them bring
Apis to him. So they went out from his presence to fetch the god.
Now this Apis, or Epaphus, is the calf of a cow which is never
afterwards able to bear young. The Egyptians say that fire comes
down from heaven upon the cow, which thereupon conceives Apis. The
calf which is so called has the following marks:- He is black, with
a square spot of white upon his forehead, and on his back the figure
of an eagle; the hairs in his tail are double, and there is a beetle
upon his tongue.
When the priests returned bringing Apis with them, Cambyses,
like the harebrained person that he was, drew his dagger, and aimed at
the belly of the animal, but missed his mark, and stabbed him in the
thigh. Then he laughed, and said thus to the priests:- "Oh!
blockheads, and think ye that gods become like this, of flesh and
blood, and sensible to steel? A fit god indeed for Egyptians, such
an one! But it shall cost you dear that you have made me your
laughing-stock." When he had so spoken, he ordered those whose
business it was to scourge the priests, and if they found any of the
Egyptians keeping festival to put them to death. Thus was the feast
stopped throughout the land of Egypt, and the priests suffered
punishment. Apis, wounded in the thigh, lay some time pining in the
temple; at last he died of his wound, and the priests buried him
secretly without the knowledge of Cambyses.
And now Cambyses, who even before had not been quite in his
right mind, was forthwith, as the Egyptians say, smitten with
madness for this crime. The first of his outrages was the slaying of
Smerdis, his full brother, whom he had sent back to Persia from
Egypt out of envy, because he drew the bow brought from the Ethiopians
by the Icthyophagi (which none of the other Persians were able to
bend) the distance of two fingers' breadth. When Smerdis was
departed into Persia, Cambyses had a vision in his sleep- he thought a
messenger from Persia came to him with tidings that Smerdis sat upon
the royal throne and with his head touched the heavens. Fearing
therefore for himself, and thinking it likely that his brother would
kill him and rule in his stead, Cambyses sent into Persia Prexaspes,
whom he trusted beyond all the other Persians, bidding him put Smerdis
to death. So this Prexaspes went up to Susa and slew Smerdis. Some say
he killed him as they hunted together, others, that he took him down
to the Erythraean Sea, and there drowned him.
This, it is said, was the first outrage which Cambyses
committed. The second was the slaying of his sister, who had
accompanied him into Egypt, and lived with him as his wife, though she
was his full sister, the daughter both of his father and his mother.
The way wherein he had made her his wife was the following:-It was not